My friend, Jaclyn, told me that she organized her garage recently and I asked her to share her story and pictures! So, here goes:
"One afternoon, I told my husband "I have an idea for tomorrow...wanna hear it?" His response..."does it involve sleeping in and being lazy all day?" HaHa! Thankfully he's a good sport and went along with my idea.
"One afternoon, I told my husband "I have an idea for tomorrow...wanna hear it?" His response..."does it involve sleeping in and being lazy all day?" HaHa! Thankfully he's a good sport and went along with my idea.
My "idea" - tackle the garage. When we remodeled the house starting last June and finishing around Christmastime, throughout the remodel, the garage became the place that things "went". We had packed up our entire house and put it in storage, minus the few things we took with us to live at my parents' house, which was supposed to be for 6-8 weeks and turned in to 5 months. So as appliances arrived, they went in the garage, as building supplies arrived, to the garage; when the old O'Keefe and Merrit stove needed to be removed from the house, yup out to the garage; and finally, when they tore apart the old kitchen, I asked the contractors so kindly to save the old kitchen cabinets to be re-purposed into our garage when the remodel was "done"...so yep, those went in the garage as well.
Upon moving back home in November, many many boxes went into the garage, which were eventually all emptied into their respective places in our "new" house; then remained the disaster of a garage with things that didn't have a home and of course those cabinets filling the center of the garage awaiting that time in which they would actually get "re-purposed".
We started by just taking everything out of the garage and making purposeful piles in the driveway. All tools in one place, things to give away in another, kids toys, yet another spot. The kids were helping with everything they could lift, right up until I removed the bounce house from the garage.
Once everything was out in the driveway, we swept and shop-vac'd all around then set to moving things into their new spots.
We removed the old make-shift shelves Matt's grandpa had installed many many years ago to allow for the cabinets to be hung. We still did not plan on hanging cabinets today, just making the space for them and setting them close so that could be done another day when we'd have additional help, so we moved in the pantry, set it in place, but when we put it on the floor next to the pantry we loved how it fit just perfectly down low and since it hung above our old counter-tops the "bottom" edge was finished nicely, so the now "top" could serve as a little shelf.
So that's exactly what we did. And since it was just on the floor against the wall, that was simple enough for Matt and I to secure in place ourselves. We had several pieces of 1/2" thick boards so we slid them under the bottoms of the cabinets to get them off the floor a tiny bit in case of minor flooding or the like...basically giving the cabinets feet, then we used some 3" screws and connected the cabinets to the walls and to eachother, a simple job actually and a nice look; and you can't even tell they are "upsidedown".
Given our success with getting the cabinets on the side actually installed, I asked Matt if he might call his dad and see if maybe he was available to help us hang the one back cabinet so we could just be DONE with the project instead of waiting for another time. In a matter of about 10 minutes, the last cabinet was hung and all we had to do was return the items in the driveway to their new homes.
There is still the matter of that O'Keefe and Merritt Range hogging the middle of my garage and keeping me from getting the bowflex back to a place where it can be used again, but I did re-list it on Craigslist so hopefully that will be out of our garage and my exercise routine can include more weight work again soon!"
Jaclyn and her hubby did a SUPER job! They didn't let having little kids keep them from the task at hand, either! Isn't this great? How motivated am I? Wow...our garage is mostly organized and then a project or some large object comes along and changes all that!
Look at it! Have you tackled your garage yet? I have to say, we keep "tackling" ours over and over and it's still one of those areas that has too many people using it that it doesn't stay nearly as clean as I'd like!
Do you have a space that you organized and would love to show OMF readers? Please email me and send me your pictures or your blog URL and I'd love to feature YOU!
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